What games are you playing now?

December 7th, 2010, 01:02

Still playing X-COM: UFO Defense. And it's the same playthrough! I'm at about the 7 month mark:

- 76 UFOs total
- 6 XCOM bases
- Defended bases against 2 UFO attacks
- Saved about 4 cities from terrorist attacks
- Finally was able to take down a LARGE terrorist ship, and
- Took out an alien base!

Yet I've just been able to make heavy plasma, blasters bombs, power suits, fusion beams, PSI training, and firestorm interceptors.

It's been many hours of play time to get to this point! Terribly addicting, too. I have done the research to find the alien source, but need the super assault vehicle to attack.

Should I rush straight to research/manaufacture the super assault vehicle and attack the source, or build up soldier PSI abilities, base defenses, and more alien tech research?

Yes, amazingly addictive for such repetition. Quite scary… Now I understand why it's one of the best of all time!

It cleverly and slowly tweaks the game play by throwing harder and slightly differently behaving enemies at you, giving you new technology, and, it turns out, and putting you in different environments. For a RTS / turn-based hybrid the game is wonderfully manageable since you can control the passage of time to be fast while you're waiting for UFOs to show up, or to be almost stopped while jumping between bases to manage. Such a smart design to be able to do this, and also useful when you're getting overwhelmed by multiple UFOs at the same time. I wish all RTS games did this, and I'd play them if they did… hell, they have bullet time for FPS's, and should for RTS's (disabled of course for multiplayer games).

Thanks for affirming my gut feeling to play XCOM next, and the advice on psi! It's what I figured after I experienced the following scare…

When I tried to recover an abduction craft that had a few Sectoid mind****ers, half of my team got panicked, berzercked, or mind controlled. Irritating buggers! Rather than trying to save the mind controlled ones, I figured it was better to put them out of their misery even for the reduced score. They seemed like too much of a liability. Darwinism at work even for the officers. A tragedy…

With a little base planning and sufficient income, you can easily carry twice as many soldiers as you really need. With the proper tech, you can ID what sort of critters are in a ship. Snakemen, particularly on a terror mission? Send in the psi-retards--there are no mind attacks and if they happen to get deaded it's not a major loss and you don't risk your psi-studs. Ethereals or high level sectoids? Send in the elite squad.

Your approach is definitely workable, though, if you can stomach the point penalty. Gotta watch your morale doing that, too. Even guys with reasonable psi scores can get voodoo'd if their morale has taken a beating from excessive casualties.

The real kick in the teeth is when you first get psi labs and throw your grunts in training, only to discover that your very best asskicker with uber ability scores has a psi of 3…

So true. I lost one of my captains to mind control. I am really going through the recruits, only keeping ones with high morale, since it isn't easily trainable. The others I dismiss, and hire more. It's expensive. The only way to afford all this is by getting and selling lots of alien artifacts. I think from now on I may not shoot down alien ships, and wait for them to land so I can get more goodies (except maybe terrorist ships). I've got the hyperwave decoders so I get full info on all the scans.

I have many more soliders than I need, I think. 4 to defend intercept only bases (3), 6 for my strike force bases (6), 15 in my main base that is also strike force base. I'm building psi labs in all my strike force bases. Hopefully I can afford to switch defenders between the intercept only base defenders to my strike force bases for training and filtering.

That's a good idea to have 2 kinds of squads in my strike force base, those that are psi resilent, those that are not. Until, of course, the base gets attacked. There always seem to psi attackers in the base attacks. Hopefully I can afford to get an army that is all psi resilent, but that may be too expensive, and I may have to dismiss some of my best veterans that haven't been "tested" yet. I'll see how it goes…

A challenge on/of its own : Try to defeat the goblins without having a single man of the guards fallen down … I tried 10 times or even more. Finally, I succeeded by replacing the mage with the knight.

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Playing Fallout:NV right now. About 30 hours in, and what a game! It's almost too big for me though.. tons of choices all the time, and no end in sight Hard to complain about, I know, but as a family man with somewhat very limited time for playing I can see myself playing this game for a *long* time!

.. and from the other end of the spectrum - my copy of "Realms of Arkania 2 : Star Trail", which I just bought on Ebay, has arrived. This will be the next old-school CRPG that I'm going to play.

I was playing Dragon Age, but my interest waned around halfway through… Then I was going to try Mass Effect with an Adept - but that bored me as well.

I have a bunch of games that I've been meaning to play, but none of them excite me much.

I even tried Cataclysm for WoW - just to make sure that it still wasn't for me - and it turned out I despised it.

Hmmm…

Have a bunch of iPod Touch games downloaded - like Infinity Blade, Undercroft, The Quest, Aralon, Dungeon Hunter 2 - but they're all cute rather than really good. Except for Quest and Undercroft - but they don't really hit the mark.

I have Divinity 2 and Fallout NV that I could pick up, but… meh.

Two Worlds 2, maybe, but I'm kinda waiting for the DX11 patch that I heard about.

DArtagnan

I suggest changing the gaming format for a bit - perhaps explore those terrifying and yet amazing console territories?

I did not have a decent gaming PC for some 10 years - which means I`m spoilt for choice now. Currently going through Fallout 3/Crysis/Bioshock. I know it`s an illusion but I feel like in some parallel universe where PC is still king :)

just finished playing Episode 1 of the Back to the Future game which was released. if you at all like the Back to the Future movies, or love them like me this game is a must. It took around 4 hours or so but considering it is only 20% of the whole project its a steal at around $20. Like most adventure games its got lots of puzzles and dialogue, but with the nods to the series, great music, Christopher Lloyd as the doc and even a donation to MJF parkinson cure research it gives you a great gaming experience.

…have to wait 'til February 'til Episode 2

I also started playing Winter Voices as well an that is an intersting game as well. I plan on writing a bit about it when I finish up the prologue. For those who like rpgs with a lot of dialogue, turn based combat, and dark and psychological writing/settings (not horror in this case) you should check it out as the prologue is on sale for $2.50 right now on steam. the combat is kind of non traditional as there's no real weapons i believe, but there are a lot of spells and the like and tile based combat with energy, move points, and heath along with 3 classes to choose from though your character will always be female.

Finished Grotesque tactics (did I mention that I loved it?), installed Batman:Arkham Asylum and was surprisingly just not into it. It seemed ok at first, but it's just sooo damn console. I wasnt ready for that. It just doesnt feel right playing it mouse/keyboard style, I couldnt get too motivated to play it. Any game where I have to keep switching on a "show me the answer" mode to progress the game repeatedly, or run around waiting for grapple point labels to appear at the corner of the screen starts to bore me. And the grapple itself is pretty lame, there's no freedom in the control of that function. The space bar being for jump/run/pull/other action etc starts to get into the "push a button and something awesome happens" no skill required gameplay that again, bores me to death.. and it made me a little dizzy, strangely enough.

As for now, I'm preparing for my first foray into firefly's Stronghold II, I'm steeling myself. I hear it's a real turd, made all the worse because of how awesome the original game was. Played the original Stronghold and Crusader expansion to death, and probably then spent twice that amount of time in the editor making stuff. Maybe the critics are wrong and SHII is not as bad as it's reported to be. We shall see…